2012 TED Prize Winner is an Idea, Not an Individual: The City 2.0

Cities are all the rage this year. Atlantic Magazine starts an entire website exploring "the most innovative ideas and pressing issues facing today’s global cities and neighborhoods." Salon is covering Dream City, asking "How should we build the cities of our dreams? How do we create the urban spaces which reflect our values and the ways we want to live?" I spend a lot of time at MeshCities, which covers "the methods and technologies that will shape the design of tomorrow's cities."

Now, the TED prize recognizes the new-found importance of cities; for the first time, the TED prize is being given not to a person, but to an idea, the City 2.0. They describe it:

Tony Garnier: Une Cite Industrielle/Public Domain

The City 2.0 is the city of the future… a future in which more than ten billion people on planet Earth must somehow live sustainably.

The City 2.0 is not a sterile utopian dream, but a real-world upgrade tapping into humanity’s collective wisdom.

The City 2.0 promotes innovation, education, culture, and economic opportunity.

The City 2.0 reduces the carbon footprint of its occupants, facilitates smaller families, and eases the environmental pressure on the world’s rural areas.

The City 2.0 is a place of beauty, wonder, excitement, inclusion, diversity, life.

The City 2.0 is the city that works.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre City/Public Domain

So who gets the $100K?

It is the first time The TED team is " bringing together a group of visionaries — urban planners, architects, technologists, authors, policy makers, and economists — to act as advocates for The City 2.0 and craft a wish capable of inspiring collaborative action by many." You can contribute too, by adding your wish for the City in a TED conversation that is already fascinating reading after only three hours of existence.